NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell discussed the need for a rookie wage scale on Sunday night.

"I think a new rookie compensation system is critical," Goodell said. "I think it's important that we have a system that is designed to reward players who succeed on the NFL field. And when a player is paid a lot of money and doesn't make it in the NFL, and that money leaves the system, that's not good for anybody. So I think we need to reward performance on the field."

As I wrote last month, the NFL and NFLPA are likely going to agree on a rookie wage scale as part of a new collective bargaining agreement. This is the popular opinion among NFL owners, just about every incredulous fan who e-mails me about the amount of money rookies are paid, and certain short-sighted players who are at the tail end of their careers and are in leadership positions within the union.

Unless owners are willing limit rookie contracts to three years, and completely eliminate restricted free agency and franchise and transition tags, the NFLPA would be insane for agreeing to a rookie wage scale tighter than the one which already exists.

The contracts that draw the ire of the media, fans, and veteran players are the ones at the very top of the draft. The $41.7 million dollars to a quarterback who hasn't thrown an NFL pass, or the $30 million in guaranteed money to a left tackle from a spread offense in college who hasn't had to face the likes of Jared Allen or DeMarcus Ware, cause the spillage of pixels on websites and message boards, imploring for tighter restrictions on what these players can make as they're entering the NFL.

Players are paid based on what they're going to do, not for what they've done. That quarterback is expected to not only turnaround a franchise that went winless the year before, but also lift the spirits of one of the most depressed areas of the country. That left tackle is expected to start immediately and protect the blindside of a once Pro Bowl-caliber quarterback who received a $65 million dollar contract, but has suffered through numerous injuries due to a leaky offensive line.

Not every player chosen in the top half of the first round is going to pan out, and that's not going to change by instituting a rookie wage scale, it's just going to make it less costly for NFL teams to draft poorly. NFL teams have a great way of ensuring that they never have to pay out these sorts of contracts: Win more games.

That's why I call the contracts signed by those Top 15 players the "Loser's Tax". Don't want to pay it? Win.

And if NFL veterans think that by limiting what players can make as they enter the league, that more money will be available for them on their way out, they're sorely mistaken. Again, there are no golden parachutes in the NFL. The older and more expensive you are, the easier it is for your contract to be terminated.

Not to mention the fact that contracts signed by veterans are often influenced by the rookie contracts. Do Karlos Dansby or DeMeco Ryans get $8 million dollars per year this off-season if Aaron Curry hadn't gotten the same last August?

The sad part is that if the NFLPA agreed to a tighter rookie wage scale, as long as all rookie contracts are limited to three seasons with no restricted, franchise, or transition tenders, the NFL would keep things just the way they are. Many of the key decision-makers inside NFL front offices are former coaches and personnel executives, who value player control over minimum short-term cost savings.

Then again, it's hard to take a league that wants to "reward performance on the field" seriously when they got rid of the poorly-named "Performance-Based Pay" program. That program didn't reward "performance" so much as it rewarded lower-paid players who logged a lot of playing time for their teams, but keeping the program, which paid out $105 million after the '09 season, in place might have lent some credibility to the league's claim to want to reward on-field performance.